


No dull flesh

by gloss



Series: Ways to be Quiet [1]
Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M, Robin needs a Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:58:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bart doesn't want to be a kid; Tim visits his body.</p>
<p>Spoilers/setting: Robin #134, Teen Titans #19: War Games, Identity Crisis, Titans of Tomorrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No dull flesh

Tim almost misses that weekend at the Tower. 

The first delay comes when Robbinsville erupts into flames on Friday night. Forgotten slag heaps under one wing of the Aparo projects do not combine well with meth labs. Robin is there until two hours before dawn, in the warren of sub-basements, chasing down the lab rats. When the firemen force him to sit down on the ice chair, he sends word via Oracle to the Titans that he'll be late. 

His comm beeps the moment he slides in through his window. 

"You have messages," Oracle tells him. "Which is interesting, really, as I had no idea I was anyone's social secretary." 

"Sorry," Tim says automatically as he stows away the suit and stretches out the kinks in his neck. 

"Eh, slow night. You want the messages?" 

He shimmies the mouse to bring his monitor back to life, then squints at his in-box. "They're already here." 

"I like to cover my bases." 

He's too tired to laugh. Too tired to reply when she adds, uncharacteristically gently, "Night, Boy Popular." 

He takes the comm bud out and packs it away, then scrolls through his messages. 

Vic, acknowledging Tim's delay. 

Kon, three times. "Where *are* you, man?" 

And...Bart? Just the once, but Oracle didn't bother trying to let the machine transcribe this one. Tim puts on the headphones and opens the attached audio file. 

"Hi! This is Kid Flash and I need to talk to Robin. The boy Robin, I mean, but not the first one, the current one. He was Robin before the girl one? And he's Robin again now and --" 

Tim is alone, so he can spare himself the wince. 

"Robin's in the field," Oracle says. "How did you --" 

"Oh! Do I need a password or something? Is it a real field, a meadow, a football field or is this some kind of pseudo-military code?" 

"He's busy." Tim can hear the frustration through Oracle's voice generator. "May I take a...message?" 

"Sure! Wow, that's really nice of you. I could just run over if you're busy. I can help! I've been reading about cryptography and there's some stuff you might really be interested in --" 

"Message. It's a one-time offer, kid." 

Tim *sees* Bart bristle at the epithet. "I'm not a kid." 

"Your name's just a devious cover, then?" 

"What? Oh, *that*. Funny story, actually, I got shot, right? And then --" 

"By Deathstroke," Oracle says. To call her tone "dry" would be absurd; it's a machine. And yet. "Clock's ticking." 

"You *are* well-informed! They weren't kidding, wow. So, okay. Can you tell Robin that I called and I need to talk to him and he's --" 

"Got it," Oracle says. 

The transmission ends there, with a click and Bart's cut-off gasp. 

It takes Tim several moments to remember to remove the headphones. 

Longer still to identify the slight weight in his chest, flat and *flaking* like roofing tile. It's sadness. He's too tired to analyze why he should be sad. He -- Bart is -- Bart talks *a lot*. There is no reason for Oracle to know that, let alone put up with it, yet --. It's the ash in his mouth, the stink of soot on his skin, the exhaustion dragging his bones, that's set him off. 

Tim showers and falls into bed. 

Four hours later, on Saturday morning, Alfred informs him that both of the Batjets are grounded, thanks to a recall on WayneCorp's landing gear. Tim drags himself to the airport and takes business class on Bruce's credit card to SFX. 

Tim is in no mood for stress, let alone *arguments*, when Kon meets him at the gate with a spooky glare and clenched fists. 

"What?" Tim shifts his backpack to his other shoulder and tries not to flinch when Kon gets him in a headlock and drags him to the nearest men's room. 

He does not bounce, much, when Kon shoves him against the metal stall. 

"How long, man?" Kon braces his hand right next to Tim's head and leans in. There's no good cop, just Kon Sipowicz here. Tim stifles a smirk. "How long were you planning to hold out on me?" 

"Hi, yourself," Tim says. "Fancy meeting you here." 

Kon extends the TK down to Tim's ankles, tightens it around his throat, and shakes his head. "Not fucking funny. How long were you going to hold out on me about Bart?" 

Tim opens his mouth, then shuts it. Kon isn't satisfied with the basically *irresistible* TK, apparently, because now he's pressing his forearm across Tim's throat. 

In costume, Tim could hardly hope to fight Kon; dressed as a civilian, he has no chance. For all his hard-earned skill, the most important lesson is knowing his limitations. 

"I don't know --" His chin hits Kon's wrist, his teeth rattling. "I don't know what you're talking about." 

Kon shakes his head. "Wrong answer, Robbo. Try again." 

"How can it be wrong if it's true?" Tim has to trust that Kon won't actually hurt him. He just needs need time to figure what's driving this preening display of over-violent masculinity. 

Kon grinds his teeth. "How long?" 

"How long what?" Tim asks. "How long -- what was it? How long was I holding out on you about Bart?" 

Shuddering, Kon presses harder on Tim's windpipe. "Answer the fucking question." 

"I --" Tim tries to breathe through his nose, but his eyes are starting to swim. At the edges, telescoping and warping Kon's face. Slowly, begrudgingly, Kon eases the pressure. "Thank you." 

"Asshole." Kon releases the hold and Tim does not sag. Much. 

Kon heads for the sink, leaning over it, banging his forehead against the mirror, then dropping his head like *he's* the one suffering from oxygen deprivation. 

"I can't answer your question," Tim says and rubs his neck. He takes a sink three away from Kon's and splashes water on his face. "Because I don't have any *clue* what you're talking about." 

Kon looks dangerously close to pulling his sink from the wall. He talks to the mirror. "I thought better of you. I thought --" 

Tim feels the wind on his face just before the sound of the door banging open reaches him. The door bangs, a blur rockets past them, the wake lifting Kon's hair off his forehead, and Bart skids to a stop. He's wearing a gray suit two sizes too big for him and carrying a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane. 

"There you are! I've been looking *everywhere* and the lady at the international terminal looked at me kind of funny, but it was okay and then I thought, hey, maybe he's flying domestic, that'd make a lot more sense, so I looked around and!" Bart grins at Tim and shoves the bouquet into his hands. "Hi!" 

The flowers used to be daisies and gerbera; Tim recognizes the shape of their stems and remnants of androecia. A few petals are stuck to the cellophane, but most didn't survive Bart's run. 

"Thank you," Tim says. The desiccated bouquet crackles against his chest as Bart hugs him and does not let go. 

"*Jesus*," Kon shouts, rattling the tiles on the ceiling. "That's what I'm talking about!" 

Tim did not rock back when Bart tackled him, but he does now when Kon yells and Bart peels himself off. The skin on his throat and arms is cold where Bart had been. 

"What's wrong?" Bart circles Kon, pawing at him and shaking his head. "I told you --" 

Kon pounds his fist into his palm and Bart rears away. "Bart, dude, I'm warning you." 

"But *why*?" 

"I said --" 

Tim clears his throat gently. He can't cross his arms, because his hands are full of flower stems. All the same, they both turn to him, then still. If they're not yet contrite, Tim expects they will be. "Someone could tell *me*." 

They shout at the same time, shoving each other. Tim's head pounds with a new headache atop the layers of the last several. 

"At the Tower," he adds. He weaves through them, noting the (temporary) slump to their shoulders. 

Bart and Kon haven't been this jumpy and irritable with each other since -- for a long time. Since Pennsylvania. They jockey each other for space, argue over who gets to take Tim to the Tower, and they're still pushing each other around when Tim heads for the BART terminal. If Bart wasn't capable of running halfway around the planet first, Tim would worry about Kon's power to snap Bart in three. 

He rides to the Tower at human speed, hugging his backpack on his lap, the cellophane on the bouquet rattling at him almost *remonstratively*. He takes the bouquet with him to the ferry, all the way up to his room in the south corner of the Tower, and sets it down on his desk with more care than the sad thing is, really, due. Only then does he head for the stairs down to the common room. 

They meet him in the hall and, for once, agree on something. Kon glances at Bart, Bart nods, and Kon pushes Tim back into his room. 

"Private," Kon says. Tim nods before sitting at the foot of his bed. Bart alights on the edge of the desk, then the windowsill, finally the desk chair. Kon just shakes his head and sits next to Tim. "Look, um. Sorry --" 

"For attacking me?" Tim nods again. "No problem." 

Generally, when he arrives on Friday nights, it takes Tim approximately ten minutes to adjust to the renewed sense of -- intimacy, here. Lots of faces, eyes that know him, and it's different, shockingly so, from Gotham. He hurries the process now, though not so fast that both Kon and Bart don't start to fidget. 

"Right. So --" He looks back and forth between them. "What's going on?" He knows right away that the question was far too broad for either of them alone; combined, it just leads to more shouting. Tim holds up his hand. "It's about Bart. That much I gathered." 

Bart shakes his head furiously. "No, it's not! It's all Kon's problem and I'm not responsible for him being such a, a --" He casts around for an insult. "A *jerk*." 

"Right. Okay." Tim turns to Kon. "Can you explain without, say. Cutting off the oxygen to my brain?" 

Kon's scowling, sucking in a deep breath, but before he can speak, Bart squirms in between them, pushing Kon away, and saying, "He doesn't get to explain! This, this --" He chews his lower lip rapidly, looking at the floor, then right at Tim. "This is about you and *me*." 

"There's no such thing!" Kon explodes upward, hitting the ceiling hard enough to shake, and careens back down until he's at the window, face against the glass. 

"I --" Tim looks back at Bart. The expectant look on his face is almost painfully sharp. 

* 

The first time it happened, it was *simple*. More than anything else, that's what he remembers now. They were hiking back down the mountain while the blizzard fell fast and bright around them. 

Before that weekend, Robin had been aware of Impulse only as a fact recently entered into the files. Speedster, temporal anomaly, rapid physical maturation, all duly noted. The files helped prepare Robin to meet *Superman*. He ought to have been able to deal with a minor hero. 

He was not prepared to *babysit*. Impulse alternated between bitching about the snow and needling Robin about Mystral. "You could have little baby superheroes! Would they have masks? They'd probably have masks. You'd never know what your own children looked like. That's so sad!" 

Robin stopped beneath a huge pine, its branches bowed with snow, where the wind wasn't quite so bad. He shook the snow off his cape and peeled sap from his tunic. 

Impulse bounced a little, shaking more snow down. "Does your mask come off?" 

"No." 

"Really?" 

"Advanced microsurgery," Robin said and handed Impulse his glove-liners. "It's permanent. Put those on." 

"Wow." Impulse's breath obscured his face, softening the windburn on his cheeks into a shade closer to salmon than fire-engine. The moisture on his goggles made him blink erratically. 

"Batman's really hardcore," Robin added. He'd gotten this look before, the open-mouthed, overawed one, but that was on the streets, and only from kids under the age of eight. Impulse, however, was just about his own height. 

"I'll say! I thought Max was bad, but no *way*." 

"Put the gloves on," Robin said. Impulse's legs were jittering with cold and his chin looked slightly blue. 

"I'm okay! My metabolism's really fast, I can't feel a thing." 

"Impulse." He used, not Batman's voice, but Robin's, only deepened. Nightwing's, maybe, halfway between Batman and Robin. "You're cold." 

"So what if I don't have a cape? I'm okay!" Impulse took off to run laps around the tree. Possibly up and down the mountain, though the heat from his boots' friction would melt the snow noticeably. 

Robin waited. He decided against deciphering the cape non sequitur; the effort required to do so was better spent on keeping warm and getting home. 

When Impulse skidded back under the branches, he had the gloves on. 

"It's better under here!" He stomped the snow off his boots and waved his hands. "See? Warmer." 

Robin assumed that the handwaving was Impulse's evidence for his adequate body heat. But evidence was made to be considered, then put away. Impulse wasn't slowing down any time soon. 

"You still look cold," Robin said. 

"Maybe we should call Mystral! She could warm us up with her mega-boobie powers, hold you really tight --. You're blushing, see? It would work and --" 

He wasn't Batman. He couldn't silence someone with a look and an unheard growl, not yet. 

If Batman had to babysit Impulse, however, Robin wanted to believe that he, too, would lose much, if not all, clarity of thought. 

Impulse was still yammering at him, poking him in the ribs and leering like a *baboon* about Mystral's body. 

Robin jerked on Impulse's arm, hard. "Quiet." 

Impulse was shivering and his eyes widened, somehow *more*. Several heavy snowflakes were melting, dissolving at the edges, on his goggles, at his hair line. On his blabbering *mouth*, red as candy in the snow. 

Robin kissed him. Cold skin, then *hot*. Impulse made an "mmf" noise at the back of his throat that tightened Robin's hold on his arm. 

Ariana wore black cherry lip gloss and brushed with cinnamon Crest. Impulse...didn't. Ariana also never opened her mouth; Tim had never asked. When Impulse's head bounced, once, against the tree trunk, though, Robin's mouth filled with slick, sudden heat. 

Simple as that, Impulse went quiet. So Robin backed away, avoiding a root that tripped Impulse, and they trudged on down the mountain. 

* 

"You --" Kon's mouth opens and closes, then opens again, his teeth clicking together, audible across the room. 

"*Yeah*, we did!" Bart bounces on the bed, twice, and squeezes Tim's hand. It's warm and *soft* against Tim's own. 

"Okay, but." Kon leans against the window and sucks on his lower lip. "Bart, just --. Don't talk. Don't --" His hand circles messily in front of him. "Don't *do* that." 

Tim watches Bart stare Kon down. His hair is in his eyes, but he swipes it out of the way with a vicious movement; his jaw is set, sharp and straight as a stone, his mouth thinned down to nothing. This has to be taking him *days* of subjective time. 

Kon sighs, finally, loudly and melodramatically, and slips down the window until he's squatting in the corner, arms folded over his chest. "So friggin' sorry, loverboy," he says. "Do continue. Please." 

* 

The second time, it wasn't so simple. Too much had happened for that to be the case. 

After quitting, they left the Young Justice headquarters together. Side by side, they headed down the long driveway. Silently, save for the occasional kicked rock that skittered ahead of them. The summer sun flattened and sharpened everything in sight. It all looked false, collaged. 

Robin's duffel bag kept bumping Bart's leg, so he switched it to his other hand. After a moment, Bart's arm brushed Robin's elbow; when Robin moved away, Bart said something at superspeed. It sounded like birdsong. Before Robin could ask him to repeat that, Bart's hand had slipped into his. 

His palm was damp, very *warm*. After another moment, during which he scanned the woods for observers and cameras, Robin laced their fingers together and squeezed. 

They used to joke about Bart being their kid. Robin had heard other jokes, most of them from Dick, about his being a cranky old man, a nagging auntie, an interfering yenta. 

None of the jokes felt very funny right then. They all felt *accurate*, however. That accuracy was neither funny nor, entirely, understandable. 

It must have been in a book he'd read once, something about the small, trusting squeeze of a child's hand in yours. Bart's hand, however, was roughly the size of Robin's own. 

It wasn't from a book. He'd heard about it, actually, from Stephanie, talking about babysitting, about toddlers putting both feet on a step before going up to the next. About her kid. 

Bart's fingers were all bone against Robin's, hot skin wrapped tightly around bone. 

At the end, where the drive met the two-lane local road, Robin dropped his bag and raised his arms. 

Bart backed away. "I can't --" 

"I wasn't asking for a ride." Robin nudged his bag with the toe of his boot. Everyone on the team had hugged Bart goodbye; Robin had assumed that it was expected. 

"Oh. Oh, I thought --" 

"No." Robin tilted his head. "How *are* you getting home, Bart?" 

Bart kicked at a clod of dirt, missed, and tried again. "Oh. Bus." 

"That's..." Robin squinted while he did the math. "That's got to be twenty hours, at least." 

"Twenty-seven," Bart said. "But that might've been because we broke down outside Harrisburg." 

"You're being --" Robin almost said "stupid", but Bart was upset enough. His shoulders sloped, his eyes were downcast, and even his voice was softer than usual. "I'll call in for a ride." 

Bart nodded, so Robin contacted the Cave. 

While they waited, Bart fidgeted. He was, clearly, resisting his urge to run by tapping his fingers against his thighs and bouncing, bobbing, in place. His delicate features were drawn tight with the tension of not-running. 

Watching Bart tug at his hair, twist his necklace around his finger, and yank on his shirt-hem, Tim felt like a babysitter again. A hapless one, that is, unable to distract Bart, never mind cheer him up. Who'd trust him with a child? His own team didn't even trust him around *them*. 

Robin grabbed for Bart's hand again. Not to distract him, though that happened, but to hold on as the ground tilted sharply up to meet him and he forgot his balance. As the vertigo vanished, streaking out through the soles of his feet, they were face to face and Bart was smiling through the lingering tension. 

"Careful," Bart started to say as Robin's nose bumped Bart's. Bart squeaked and threw his arm around Robin's neck, *clutching* at him. They tilted left, then right, and their foreheads cracked together. 

Robin finally realized that he needed to be still, and the kiss shifted from impatient tooth-clacking to something sharper and wetter. Heat streamed out from Bart's mouth through Robin's veins, flaring across his nerves. He heard himself *grunt* when Bart's tongue nudged and stroked against his own. 

Bart kissed like he was doing CPR and inhaling a popsicle and surveying Robin's dental work all at the same time. He bounced on his toes, his fingernails scratching at the cape's neck, as he made squeaky wet sighs that shot more heat through Robin's bones until they sparked and glowed, delicate as kindling. 

Somehow, through the kiss and all its attendant effects, Robin managed to hear the distant hum of the plane's arrival. When he pulled away, Bart gaped after him, fishlike, his eyes squeezed shut. 

"Ride's coming," Tim said and pointed to the field across the highway. 

"Wow, that took *forever*." Bart swiped the back of his hand across his wet mouth and grinned. "I didn't mind waiting, though!" 

Robin twitched his shoulders to close the cape. "Listen, Bart, we --. Don't tell anybody, okay?" 

"Like they'd believe me! Who would I tell? Carol, probably, but she's really cool, you'd like her a lot -- Oh! You *do* like her, remember her? Carol? From the ski trip. She's really, really smart. Like *you*-level smart." 

Bucklen-comma-Carol-Marguerite. Parents deceased, SSAT's in the 99th percentile, four letters to the editor published in local newspapers, Sassy magazine, and The Los Angeles Times. 

"Bart --" 

Bart's eyebrows curved, then jumped. "Don't be modest! There's a fine line between modesty and arrogant self-deprecation, according to Max, not that *I* have a problem with that, but --" 

"*Bart*." Robin weighted his tone as much as he could, despite the aftersparks and odd *numbness* around his mouth. "Please. Don't tell anyone." 

Bart tilted his head and bounced, rubbing his lips together until they had to hurt. "Didn't you like it?" 

He'd touched Bart's cheek, halfway through the kiss, and the light down there, peachlike and soft, made Robin's palm ache. He clenched his fist beneath his cape. "Yes. I just --. It's private, okay? Just between you and me." Robin closed his eyes for half a second. He sounded like the creepy uncle they always warned you about. "Private." 

"I can do that! I can totally keep secrets." Bart nodded vehemently. "Don't worry about that." 

At the plane, Nightwing yelled across the road to them. He hung by one foot, upside down, from the pilot's side. "You ladies done chitchatting anytime this week? Shake a tail feather, would you?" 

Robin hurried across the road, Bart following him. Nightwing flipped down effortlessly, shaking his head. "This thing needs a horn, jeez." He grinned at Bart. "Hey, you're all better. Looks like I'll be your chauffeur today." 

Bart shook his hand enthusiastically. "I know you! Wally talks about you all the time. Well, when he's around, but that's not often, but I *totally* know you. I used to work with Arsenal." Bart threw back his shoulders and nodded, like he was confirming something unsaid. "He says you're cool, too. Wally said he fired you. Roy, I mean, but Wally says a lot of stuff. I usually just tune him out." 

"Sounds like a good plan," Nightwing said under his breath to Robin. He frowned as Bart ran around the plane. 

"Is this a *Stealth*?" Bart asked, pulling himself up inside and scrambling over the controls. 

Dick swung up to the pilot's seat and offered Robin a hand, while simultaneously pushing Bart back to the passenger crawlspace. "Next-generation design, yeah. Buckle up, kiddo." 

Bart talked throughout the flight, over the dinner Max Mercury insisted on serving them, and back out to the airfield. When they were finally back in the air, Nightwing scrubbed his hands over his face. "Think I liked him better in a coma." 

Robin felt his mouth tighten into a frown. "Yeah, like you're Mr. Terse L. Laconic." 

"Damn." Nightwing exhaled slowly. "How'd I forget what it's like being around a speedster?" 

"Early onset senility?" Robin suggested. 

Nightwing grabbed him into a headlock and yanked on his hair. "Wally wasn't ever *that* bad." He released Robin and sighed again. "I think." 

Robin eyed the altitude readout and touched the center of his lips. Should have tried kissing him, he thought and smirked. 

He was fairly sure Nightwing didn't notice. 

* 

"No freaking *way*!" Kon is saying as Tim blinks away the memory. "You've been macking on each other this whole time?" 

"No," Bart says quietly at the same time Tim says, "Yeah." 

Kon scowls again. "Which is it?" 

Bart nudges Tim and gives him a Look. Tim can't recall being in league with *anyone* against Kon, not in a long time. He feels nearly treacherous now, meeting Bart's eyes and speaking to him while Kon's out in the cold. 

"There was that night -- the second weekend here?" It feels even worse, being *uncertain* like this. 

"That doesn't count," Bart says firmly. 

"But --" 

"Can't count it!" Bart sounds shrill now. 

Kon is looking back and forth between them, confused and impatient, fist lightly banging his knee. "What night? When? Why? What *happened*, man?" 

Bart blurs out of the room, reappearing on his skateboard. "I was skating, right? Couldn't sleep, it's too *cold* here, Kory keeps the AC up so high --" 

"We know," Tim and Kon say together. 

"Right, so I was skating and I found Tim sneaking around --" 

Tim swallows. "I don't sneak around." 

Grinning for the first time, Kon points at him. "You so sneak." 

"I don't --" 

"Shut up," Kon says and turns to Bart. "Okay, so you found him sneaking around like a little creepy freak --" 

"-- and we were alone! We're hardly ever alone any more, so I skated into him, just a joke, but he dodged and I hit the wall and bruised my arm --" Bart holds up his elbow in evidence. 

"I said I was sorry," Tim puts in. He's losing the situation, piece by piece, moment by moment. 

"It really hurt! And he helped me up, and for a second I thought, hey, it's Tim, so I closed my eyes, right?" Bart mimics the action for them, squeezing shut his eyes and puckering up ostentatiously. 

Tim realizes that one's heart really can, literally, sink. His just did, dropping through his chest like a stone. 

"I had things on my mind," he says. Catching Kon's eye, he adds, "Genetics stuff." 

"Whatever!" Bart vanishes again, returning on foot and juggling six oranges. "That night totally doesn't count. Can't count it." 

Tim opens his mouth. The kiss-that-wasn't descends like a ghost over his lips, clinging fast, chilly. Kon is shaking his head in obvious disbelief while Bart adds a butter knife to his juggling. 

"Bastard," Kon says to Tim. He knocks the oranges out of Bart's hands and puts his arm around Bart's shoulders. "You heartbreaking callous playa-*bastard*." 

Tim's teeth clack as he shuts his mouth. 

"I'm okay, though, don't worry," Bart says and grabs the denuded bouquet, thrusting it back into Tim's lap. "No broken heart here. Allens are pretty resilient. Grandma Iris said so." 

"You didn't --" Tim sits up, straightening his spine vertebra by vertebra. "You told your grandmother..." 

"She promised to keep it a secret, don't worry," Bart says, very gently. He sits back down next to Tim and pats his arm. The cellophane rustles in response. "Grandmas are like doctors and priests. They can't tell. They won't testify against you. They *wouldn't*." 

"Right," Tim says. "But --" 

Kon clears his throat. Leaning against the wall in front of them, he has his arms crossed again, but much more loosely. The rage and ridiculous violence have dissipated from his posture, but his expression remains wary. "So you're secret butt-buddies, great, fabulous, I'm so happy --" 

Tim winces at the crudity, but before he can say anything, Kon continues. 

"I just don't get -- why *now*?" 

Tim cannot answer that. As soon as each kiss was over, he consigned it to the past tense. After the second one, when guilt crept through him at the persistent memories of Bart's warm, fuzzy cheek and eager mouth, his own bone-deep *need* and guilt over mis-wielded authority, he promised himself it wouldn't happen again. 

In the silence, Bart stirs to life. "*Duh*. It's our anniversary!" 

Kon shoots Tim a helpless look. "I --. What?" 

Tim closes his hand around the flower stems and wishes for roses, for thorns to drive into his skin. "I don't know." 

"Bart," Kon says carefully. "Where the *hell* did you get that from?" 

"From you, dummy." Bart sighs impatiently. "It's like Tasha says, there are obligations and expectations attendant on a relationship and so I --" 

"Wait, *Tasha*?" Kon grabs Bart's arm. 

"Ow! Yes, Tasha." 

"Oh, *God*." Releasing Bart, Kon covers his face with his hands and slides down to the floor. "No, no, *no*." 

Tim's mouth remains haunted. Like he has to speak *through* the ghost. "Who's Tasha?" 

Bart bounces next to him. "She's great, Tim! You'd really like her, she reminds me of you, a lot. You know, really smart and *blunt* and --" 

Peeking out from behind his fingers, Kon groans and says, "He was bored. You know what he's like when he's bored --" 

_I'm not the mom, damn it!_

"-- so I let him borrow my Wendy DVD's. You know, season four? I thought the black and white episode would keep him occupied. It's really symbolic and shit --" 

Bart sniffs dismissively. "Rip-off of standard German Expressionist tropes. *Boring*." 

"-- but it sounds like he watched the beginning of the season. Four-point-two, when Tasha molests Julian?" 

Tim touches his temples, certain that the veins there are throbbing. "Tasha the justice demon?" 

"Not any more!" The mattress sighs as Bart blurs away again. He rushes back and pushes a copy of the Wendy the Werewolf Stalker Annual into Tim's hand. "She's human now and just trying to understand the world and the ways of the humans, but it's really *hard*. Boy, do I sympathize --" 

Tim looks down at the magazine. Bart has opened it to a photo-spread of Wendy's best friend. Her *male* best friend, shirtless and tanned and dewy with sweat as he lounges next to a pool. 

"This is Javier," Tim says slowly. Bart nods fervently and Kon groans again. "I thought --. We were talking about Tasha." 

"Forget Tasha!" Bart jabs his finger at Javier's glistening pecs. "What do you think of *him*? Ripped, huh?" 

"Um." 

"Bart, give it up," Kon mutters. 

Bart whirls on Kon and kicks him in the shin. "You shut up!" 

Turning back around, Bart grins at Tim. He has the widest smile Tim's ever seen, Stephanie included. Tim's chest tightens; he can't smile back, but Bart just beams more brightly. He pulls off his overlarge suit jacket and there's a blur of white and brown just before Tim gets a lapful of *Bart*, arms around his neck. The magazine and the flowers spill to the floor. 

"Happy anniversary! Two years ago today, there was the ski trip." 

"Ah," Tim says. 

Bart kisses him at full speed, just a riot of vibrations and moisture, then slows it down. Tim goes from breathless vertigo to a tingly daze in the space of half a moment. 

Kon throws the magazine at them. "Stop it, Bart! *Christ*. Tim's not -- he doesn't want --. Fucking *cut it out*." 

Keeping one arm hooked around Tim's neck, Bart twists bonelessly to glare at Kon. His ass shifts right against Tim's crotch and Tim doesn't want to believe it's conscious. 

Bart is -- Bart is *displaying* Tim and himself. The arrangement of bodies to serve as...evidence. Of connection, relation, imbrication. Tim offered that old photo to Dick, in which he perched on Dick's left leg; Bart perches on Tim's leg, shows Kon the past in the present. 

Tim shudders. 

"I left you books about this," Bart is telling Kon. "Go read them." 

"Jesus, Bart! Get *off* him! Tim's not -- he doesn't want --" Kon floats off the floor and punches the wall until it dimples under his fist. 

Bart wiggles in his lap, staring at Tim now, golden eyes unreal and intense. Kon punches the wall again before vaulting out the window. Except it's closed, so he falls on his ass in a spill of limbs and curses. 

Tim wants to be elsewhere. Anywhere. "I --" 

"Shut up," Kon says from the floor. "Lemme think." 

Bart tugs on Tim's hand. "Do I have to talk to Batman about this? Get his blessing? I hope not, that'd be really awkward. I guess it'd be okay, though, I mean, we've worked together in the past. I hope he remembers that -- no, course he remembers that, he's probably got a whole file on me. Tim!" He tugs harder. "Does Batman have a file on *me*?" 

"I...don't know." Before Bart can vibrate into full panic, Tim adds, almost honestly, "Probably." 

"Mr. Sheridan back in Manchester had fourteen files on me, did I ever tell you that?" 

"No." Tim's right leg is starting to numb under Bart's weight, but when he shifts, the friction just gets worse. "You didn't." 

Bart nods. "Yeah. *Fourteen*. So that's cool with you?" 

"Your middle-school misadventures?" 

Frowning, Bart squeezes his arm around Tim's neck. "The Batman thing!" 

Tim cannot put Batman into the same thought with Bart, with anything remotely social. "Sure." 

Bart nuzzles at his neck, quickly as an unconscious shiver, then slides off Tim. "You two should talk. I'll be back!" 

Tim lies down on his back, keeping his feet flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He can hear Kon moving around, kicking the flowers, punching his palm, huffing and puffing. 

Tim can wait him out. They both know that. 

So his haunted mouth twitches when Kon finally kicks Tim's right foot and says hoarsely, "You --. You did, huh?" 

"I didn't lie, no," Tim says. "Not about this. Bart." 

Kon kicks him harder. "You can't --. You're not. *Tim*." 

"Maybe I am." 

He listens to Kon circle the room again, pacing restlessly. "I'm not even going to yell at you for not telling me," he says and his tone's weary in a way that Tim wouldn't have believed possible, not before the DNA information came to light. "But, *Christ*. Bart?" 

"Yeah." Tim sits up on one elbow. Kon's hovering next to the window again, darkly silhouetted, late-afternoon light sketching his outline. "Bart." 

"You fucking *hurt* him," Kon says and laughs like a thunderclap. His left hand circles fast before he points at Tim. "You know. I'll fucking cut your balls off, Drake." 

"Noted," Tim says. Kon making assumptions without all the facts, presuming that there's something in the future with Bart. Tim lets that pass. For the moment. "Thanks." 

"Don't thank me." Kon sinks down next to him and shoulders Tim roughly. He knits his fingers together in his lap and breathes loudly for several moments. "Jesus. I don't have to say, like, congratulations, do I?" 

"No." Tim leans over and picks up each flower stem, one by one. "That would be -- unnecessary." 

* 

Once he's donned the uniform, Robin can deal with the immediate fall-out. Kory hugs him hard when she sees him, squishing him against her chest, patchouli-tinged breasts pressing against his cheek. Cassie smiles bravely at him, Raven tilts her head inquisitively but says nothing, Gar makes several distinctly unfunny jokes about human vibrators, and Vic -- Vic asks to speak to him privately. 

"Given the Titans' history," he says and clears his throat. Robin nods and brushes his fingers across the inside of his cape. Vic's human eye is *more* penetrating than the cybernetic one, depthless and black. "Be careful, that's all I ask." 

"Yes," Robin says and nods again. Care is not, quite, possible when Bart is involved. 

They bust a metachild smuggling ring that night. The alpha team of Kon, Cassie, and Bart do much of the work, while Robin is relegated to contacting the various pertinent authorities and arranging for transfer. 

Back at the Tower, he finds Bart outside his room. Robin peels off the mask and lifts his chin at the door. 

"Figured you had it booby-trapped," Bart says, following him in. 

"Right, of course." Tim unlatches the cape and hangs it up. When he turns around, Bart's there, out of the Kid Flash suit, wearing just a short t-shirt as he wraps his arms around Tim. 

"Wanna make out?" 

"Bart --" Tim flattens his palm against Bart's narrow chest. Skin and bone, inhuman heat radiating through the thin fabric. 

"Please? I like kissing you!" Bart pauses and chews his lower lip. "You're a really good kisser. The *best*." 

That's...unexpected. Tim blinks, delaying for now the question of just how many people Bart may have kissed in order to come to that conclusion. "Am I?" 

Bart pulls him to the bed, but Tim resists lying down. Instead, they shift and entangle, legs bumping and elbows catching ribs, "sorry"s mixing with the wet slide of kisses. They end up leaning against the wall, Bart's knee pushing between Tim's thighs, as they kiss. 

Bart is leaner than the last time they kissed, longer limbs and gentler mouth, but otherwise, it's -- just the same. Eager and willing, laughing against Tim, his fingers clinging and scratching, his forehead knocking Tim's, his tongue sliding across the pain. Whirlwind-chaos, Tim thinks, so much wind and motion that there's no hope for order. 

Bart's gasping and grinning, his eyes practically *shining*, as Tim releases him. "Bart, we --" 

"It's fun," Bart says. "You think so, too." 

Tim tests his lip's sensitivity with the tip of his tongue. "I suppose I do." 

"Good!" Bart kisses him again, nudging his shoulder back, grunting with frustration when Tim continues to resist lying back. "C'mon, Tim, just --" 

Tim sits back up. "I think we --." He looks at Bart, and shrugs. "We need to take this." He bites on the laugh. "Slow." 

Bart squares his shoulders and frowns. "I'm not --. I'm *not* like that. Any more." 

Tim slips his arm around Bart's waist and squeezes gently. Bart doesn't want to be Impulse any more. Any hint that he's still the crazed, hyperactive child of renown makes him bristle and lash out. 

"So we can take it slow," Tim says and keeps his tone low, measured. He can't outright *coax* Bart, not with his deep resistance to being treated like a child. Rather, Tim has to sound like they're negotiating. If this is the voice they use to talk suicides off the Sprang Bridge, then so be it. "Right?" 

"Yeah," Bart says after a long pause. "Guess so." 

"Allens are resilient," Tim reminds him. 

Bart's expression glides instantly from doubt to -- to *joy*. There is no other adequate descriptor. He grins and nods quickly and hugs Tim chokingly hard. "Exactly!" His mouth's wet and open, slicking across Tim's chin, for just a second before he stands up. At the door, he cocks his head, letting his hair fall in his eyes. "Good night!" 

* 

Just as Tim suspected, "taking it slow" does not mean very much to Bart. He grabs at Tim whenever they're alone, mouth already open, eyes bright and intent, and he finds many ways for them to be alone. During the week, he calls Tim several times a night; when Tim doesn't answer, Bart instant-messages him and threatens to run to Gotham "just to check up". He calls so frequently that Tim has to invent a new transfer student at school, one who needs a lot of tutoring, to allay his father's questions. 

A few weeks pass, the afternoons and early evenings filled with Bart's contacts, the nights occupied with cleaning up the aftermath of the Gotham gang war, the weekends spent with the Titans, where Kon appears to redoubling his efforts with regard to Cassie, and with Bart. 

Bart's metabolism doesn't let him sleep very long at any one stretch. Tim finds his early-morning and afternoon catnaps interrupted by Bart's excited knocks on his door. 

"Slow," he reminds Bart. 

For the most part, Kon avoids the subject. Compartmentalization, however, proves to be as difficult for Kon as it is for his -- his non-evil progenitor. 

In the locker room, as they're peeling off layers of goopy underworld lymph, Kon finally loses it. 

"He's about, what? *Six*?" Grimacing, he throws a handful of the goop at Tim's head. "Okay, a really well-read six. But --. Dude!" 

"I'm aware of that." Tim rolls the goop into a small ball and sets it down outside the showers. 

Kon exhales noisily. "Of course you are. Nothing gets past *you*." 

Tim rinses off under the hottest water he can stand. "I'm --. We're taking it slow." 

"Yeah. Good luck with that." Cackling, Kon spanks him with a wet towel. "Avoid it as long as you can." 

Tim will not reflect on what he's avoiding. He doesn't have the time for that. His schedule has become even more hectic than it used to be. Bruce's reluctance to become involved with anyone shifts from merely comprehensible fact to fully relevant *principle*. 

Despite Tim's firmness, Bart remains as resourceful, eager, and *urgent* as ever. 

* 

Contrary to popular opinion, Tim *does* understand that there are limits to knowledge. There are some things he isn't supposed to know. For example, he cannot see the feeds from the dorm rooms. When he hacked into the Tower's security system, he hesitated for a moment over those feeds, but did not patch them to his laptop. 

He does keep an eye on public areas. That's just a good idea. 

While Cassie and Gar go into the city to make nice with civic leaders, the rest of the team is left to their own devices. Kory's in her garden, Rachel's studying American history, Bart and Kon are goofing off somewhere, and Tim is decrypting some documents for Barbara. 

The feed for the roof beeps and Tim checks it. Nothing to worry about; they aren't being attacked. 

Kon's just got Bart in a headlock and they're bumping against the door, jogging the alarms. 

Bart's long, skinny arms windmill and his feet blur as he tries to wriggle free, so when Kon abruptly drops him, Bart goes splat on the concrete. Tim has learned, recently, that Kon and Bart haven't *left* the Young-Justice days nearly as far behind as Tim himself. 

"You! You jerk!" he's yelling as Tim dials up the volume. Bart scrubs his face and kicks out at Kon's legs. "Just *listen* to me --" 

"I don't want to hear it!" Kon yells and rises ten feet into the air, covering his ears. "You can't make me listen, I don't care --" 

Bart pulls himself to his feet. "C'mon, Kon, I --" He smiles, and Tim knows that expression; Bart's trying for ingratiating but succeeding only in leering strangely. "I just want to *talk*." 

"Oh, I know what you *want*." Kon points at Bart and shakes his head decisively. "That's what I'm not listening to. No way, no how." 

"Kon, *please*?" 

Rearing back, Kon jumps up another two feet. "No! No way do I need to hear about my two best friends and their freaking *sexcapades*." 

Tim nudges *down* the volume at that and leans a little closer to the screen. 

Bart looks down at his feet, still big, still in his way every time he isn't running. "Kon, come on." 

Kon drops a few inches down and looks out over the bay. It's hard to hear the next bit, but his jaw clenching and relaxing is clear as day. "You got boy troubles, talk to your boyfriend." 

Tim's right temple throbs sharply. 

Bart looks up, squinting against the sun behind Kon. "I'm trying to talk to my best friend." He bounces in place briefly before adding, "I listen to *you* talk about Cassie." 

"That's different --" Kon folds his arms. At least now he's meeting Bart's eyes, even if he's still got the Super-shoulders spread wide. 

"How?" 

"It's *different*, Bart, it just is." 

"Why?" Bart's head tilts; the angle is dangerous, Tim knows, promising stubborn defiance, but he wonders if Kon does. "Because she's a girl? Because you guys are having sex?" 

Kon floats down slowly, taking his time, his jaw still working. He lands on his toes. "You guys're having--" He winces. "Sex." 

"No. We're not." 

"Yes, you are." Kon's voice is getting stronger. More confident. 

"I think I'd *know*," Bart says, turning around fast and trying to flip into a handstand. He stumbles and Kon catches him. "I'm forgetful, yeah, but --" 

Kon holds Bart at arm's length. "Wait, you're *not* having sex?" 

Held like that, from the overhead angle of the roof camera, Bart looks like he's dangling from Kon's fist. He sighs and scuffs his toes. "That's what I'm trying to *talk* about." 

Kon rubs the back of his neck. "So, um. You want my advice or something?" 

"Yes!" Bart's nodding vehemently and reaching for Kon, but Kon shakes his head and, eventually, Bart drops his hand. 

"On having sex. With --. With Tim." 

"No!" Bart's posed like a rabbit, all tensed muscles under his big clothes. He eyes Kon, then relaxes slightly, rubbing his palms over his thighs. "Well, sort of. In a roundabout way." 

Kon squats on the edge of the roof, head in his hands. "Bart, buddy, you've got to work with me here." 

"Promise not to fly away again?" 

Grinning, Kon pats the space beside him. "Hey, I can promise not to try." 

Tim closes the feed. Kon can talk to Bart like he's still a kid and be listened to. 

He's glad someone can. 

* 

It's not a line that's reached so much as a *space* that makes Tim halt each session of making out. 

The next weekend, on Friday night, they get to that space more quickly than ever. 

When Bart's hand skates over Tim's waist, fingers scrabbling at the rise of his pelvic bone, that's when it's time to pull away from the kiss. 

Tim's mouth is tender, his tongue sore from biting and pushing. "Bart --" 

"But you're --" Bart points at Tim's crotch. "You're really *hard*." 

Tim carefully does not adjust himself. "It's --. I'm okay." 

Bart's eyes widen as he leans a little closer. His cheeks are still red, the flush spilling down his throat, down his *chest*. Tim's palms know the heat, even if he hasn't *seen* it. "Are you going to masturbate? After I leave, you're totally going to, aren't you?" 

Tim clenches his hands. "Probably." 

"*Oh*. Oh, *wow*." Bart sighs out the words, husky and distracted, and Tim's stupid dick *twitches*. When Bart reaches over, though, he has enough wherewithal to grab Bart's wrist. Bart yelps. "I wasn't going to!" 

"Bart --" Tim keeps his voice as level as possible. Bart's wrist is *tiny* in his hand; Tim's fingers wrap all the way around it with room to spare. His dick's throbbing now. "You should go." 

"Can I --" Bart shakes his head, but his hair's still in his eyes. "I won't touch, don't worry. But -- *Tim*. Can I watch?" 

Tim swallows. His throat's unnaturally dry. "I --. No." 

"But I want to." 

He snorts. "I get that." 

"And you --" Bart looks down. His eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks, little smudged half-moons. "You want to, too." 

"How --" Tim starts, then swallows again. "How is that not sex?" 

Bart glances up, his eyes sharp. "Generally, the popular definition of sex involves some form of penetration! Even if you're a lesbian -- not that you are, just go with me here -- Tim! Are you a lesbian?" 

"Ah." Tim wets his lips. "No." 

"Oh, *good*. It'd explain a lot, but anyway -- Sex! Even with lesbians, oral stimulation of the clitoris? Still kind of penetration. So, see?" He bobs his head. "Watching? Not penetration!" 

"Jesus." Tim hears himself speak, but it's from a distance. He needs to think. Time's rushing past and sweeping him up, and he has to fight his way clear. 

But every time Bart moves, gesturing or bouncing or shifting to get more comfortable, the mattress moves with him, and Tim's ass *clenches* and his fucking dick... 

He has to laugh at that, shortly, a little wheezily. His dick's not fucking anything. *Dick*, though, very well might be fucking. 

Bart looks suspicious. "What's so funny?" 

Tim shrugs. This is something else to focus on, something far less treacherous than his physical reactions. "Nightwing." 

Huffing out a breath, Bart sits back against the wall, arms folded tightly over his chest. "You're thinking about someone else? You're thinking about your *brother*. Right now. And you think I--" 

"Bart --" 

Bart doesn't move. He's got his arms crossed so tightly that his t-shirt rides up his stomach slightly. Ridges of muscle there under skin three shades paler than his weird, weird eyes. There shouldn't be any room for *anything* on him, skinny as he is, but they're there. He yelps again when Tim brushes the back of his hand, then his palm, back and forth over the exposed skin. 

The old Bart would have jumped three feet in the air before running away. Sometimes -- *now* -- Tim misses that predictability. 

This Bart yelps, then sighs, his mouth falling open. "It's okay," he says, a little dreamily. When he takes a breath, his skin rises against Tim's palm. "I think about him, too." 

"I didn't say I --" Tim curls his fingers. Bart's grinning at him, biting his lower lip, *challenging* him. 

"I do, though," Bart says. "He's pretty handsome, you know." 

"Sure." 

"And, like, there's the acrobat thing --" Bart's coming closer and Tim's not going to let himself wonder *how* this is happening. His arm folds up, hand caught between their chests, and Bart's kissing his neck. His ear. 

"Bart." 

"Tim." Bart *giggles*, right behind Tim's ear, and the shivers stream all the way down his calves. "It's okay! He's not really your brother and he *is* handsome and --" 

Tim names, in Latin, the bones of the fingers, hand, and wrist, and then he's able to push Bart away. "You should go." 

Bart gapes at him for a split-second, then shakes his head. "Nuh-uh. I'm going to watch." 

"You're not --" 

He flops down next to Tim and crosses his arms again, tucking his hands under his armpits. "See? No hands." 

"Wonderful," Tim says and hears *Batman* in his tone. "Just --. Don't mention Dick again. Okay?" 

Bart's still predictable in some ways. He giggles at the name -- Tim's going to have to remember to remind him about secret identities, because he *slipped*, Jesus -- then nods furiously. "No hands, no Dick. Except!" 

"Yes, except --" Tim breathes through his nose and tries to make his fingers work on his fly. "Hand on dick, right?" 

"Exactly!" Bart *beams*. His right leg is twitching, his eyes are fastened on Tim's hand, and this is just absurd. Ridiculous. Tim shouldn't be this hard, not *now*. 

But he is, damp and hard under his fingertips. Bart suddenly stills; Tim was fifty-percent sure Bart didn't believe he'd get his way. This just confirms it. 

"Do you -- is that what it's like?" Bart's breathing on Tim's arm. "When you're alone?" 

"Um. Yeah?" Tim tightens his grip and tries to concentrate. He's thinking of Bart's wrist and his dick jumps and then Bart kisses his elbow, the inside of his arm, and he *can't*. 

Can't concentrate, can't do this. Can't let go. Bart's blurring next to him, mouth on his ear, his lips, down his neck. So fast, so *skinny* and hot, it's too much to take. Tim can only *pull* at himself as Bart throws his arms around him and holds him, vibrating and breathless. 

"Do it!" he's saying, so fast, so many times. "Doitdoitdoit, c'mon, Timtimtimtim--" 

Tim's the one who watches, but now Bart's on him, hungry and *fast*, speeding through him, and he has to get this over with. His back arches, his hand slicks up and down his dick, and Bart's eyes are hotly fastened on *him*. 

Coming isn't any kind of relief, though Bart jerks away and stares at him and at least Tim can let go now. Coming *hurts*, like something important just fell away, off, and he can't find it. He can't breathe. 

Bart's breathing enough for both of them. *Panting*, really. 

"Wow. Wow, wow, *wow*." Bart braces his hands on his knees and grins. "That was really -- you really --. Wow." 

His tissue box is fourteen inches away. Tim reaches for it, takes two, and wipes himself clean. His stomach's cold, but his face is hot. There's a wet spot on his leg. 

When his fingers graze the spot, Bart chokes on another giggle. "Sorry?" 

"You --" Tim squints at the come on his fingertips. Bart can do everything at superspeed. Tim should not be surprised. 

"You said not to touch *you*," Bart says in a rush. "But I was watching and you looked, you know. You looked really good, so I --" 

Tim closes his eyes. Bart, with his pants around his knees, while he had his mouth on Tim's arm, tasting *him* --. His own skin, his pulse-point, while Bart had his hand in his jock, licking Tim and jacking himself. The image blurs and darkens. "It's okay." 

"I --" Bart tugs on his hand. "Open your eyes?" 

Only children believe that if they're not looking at something, it doesn't exist. And they only believe *that* until they're eighteen months old. 

Tim tugs up his briefs and zips his fly. He can do a lot of things in the dark. Dressing is one of the *first* things he learned. 

Bart leaves, eventually. The breeze blows all the papers on Tim's desk onto the floor. 

* 

Bart disappears for the rest of Friday night and all day Saturday. Tim is careful not to ask, and no one gives him odd looks, so he has to trust that Bart hasn't run to complain to anyone. 

Still, without him, the Tower is strangely quiet. Not restfully so, but uneasily quiet and uncomfortable. Tim runs three short sparring sessions with Raven on the escrima, helps Vic test a new security protocol, watches half of a Hong Kong thriller with Kon and Gar, and ends up wandering the Tower long after everyone else has turned in. 

On his fourth circuit of the complex, he hears thumps and angry shouts coming from the tennis court across from the pool. Vic said that the original Titans played a lot of tennis, but hardly anyone uses the court these days. 

Tim holds the cape closed as he stands in the shadows, watching -- he doesn't even know what to call what he's watching. 

Bart's there in full Bjorn Borg get-up, complete with head- and wristbands, yelling at one of his scouts and volleying two rugby balls and a badminton waffle to the scout and himself. 

Tim hasn't read newspaper cartoons in years, but all he can think of is that Bart's playing Calvinball. The scout is Hobbes and there are no rules, just lots of noise and reckless, anxious motion. 

"Hi!" Bart calls, waving a cricket bat over his head. "Wanna play? We call it Bart-nis!" 

Tim stands under an unlit light and gestures at the scout, who's currently trying to tightrope-walk the tennis net. "I didn't realize --" 

"That I have other friends?" Bart mops his face. "I've got lots of friends." 

"That you still had scouts around. I thought they --" 

"We're not *disposable*," the scout tells Tim, hands on his hips. 

Tim nods. "I --" 

"Ignore him," Bart says. "He's just cranky 'cause --" 

"Because you cheated, jerk!" The scout stomps one golden foot. Somehow, Tim had never noticed until just now that the scouts are the same color as Bart's eyes. 

Tim's low on sleep, even for him, and he's aware that he owes Bart some kind of apology. He has a lot on his mind, too, but none of that excuses how belatedly he notices, further, that the scout has goggles and --. "Bart, your scout's wearing --" 

"I'm right here!" the scout yells. 

"I know that." Tim keeps looking at Bart. "But I'm talking to --" 

"Your boyfriend?" The scout singsongs and weaves figure-eights around Tim and Bart. "Bart and Tim, standin' on the court --" 

Tim takes Bart by the elbow. "Your scout's wearing the Impulse suit." 

"Yeah, I know. Weird, huh? They won't change out of it, I don't know why, they're really, like, adamant." 

"And he seems --" Tim bites the inside of his lower lip. "Upset with me." 

Bart's eyes widen absurdly and he shakes his head. "Oh, no, he's not. He's just -- he's really cranky. Don't take it personally! He's kinda --" 

It is the vehemence of Bart's denial, combined with his regression to (even more) childlike behavior, that confirms Tim's suspicions. 

"So I think that means *you're* upset with me," he finishes. He expects Bart to jerk away, windmill his arms, beg and plead to be understood as he launches into a yet *more* vehement denial. 

Bart, however, simply stares down at his hands. "Scout, get back in." 

The scout runs away, into the girl's locker room. "But, *boss*," it whines, poking its head back out the door, "you said --" 

"Get in, please." Bart's voice is low, rough, and he shivers, once, as the scout, rolling its eyes and sighing dramatically, merges into him. Bart takes a deep breath that makes his ribs stand out beneath his shirt like a bellows, then meets Tim's eye. "Okay, we're alone now. I'm not --. I'm not mad." 

"Hm," Tim says, prevaricating, as he sorts out which issue to tackle first. There is the persistence of the Impulse-identity, the regressive behavior, the fact of his own guilt... 

"But if you keep making *that* stupid hmming noise, I will be." Bart shudders into a blur that laps the court. In the time it takes Tim to unlatch his cape and unbuckle his tunic, Bart's blur circles the space forty-seven times. 

He waits there, at center court, in tights and jersey, until Bart tumbles back into human speed. His cheeks are flushed all over again, his hair dark with sweat, and his fingers curl, clutching, around Tim's wrists. Sometime in the run, he changed into the Kid Flash suit; the yellow glows malarial beneath the fluorescent lights. 

"Okay, sorry. Better now," Bart says. He tilts his head at the tunic and cape at Tim's feet. "Hey, you ever notice how you're all wrapped up but my suit's like *skintight*?" 

"Yes." Tim sucks on the back of his teeth. "I have." 

Bart's glance is sharp. "Really?" 

Goosebumps spring up across Tim's bare neck and arms. "Really." When he blinks, the afterimage of the scout, dressed as Impulse, glows dimly. "Yours is good. For running." 

"It is," Bart says and punches Tim's arm. "Yours is good for hiding!" 

"Yes," Tim says. His eyes burn a little from tiredness. "I. I'm here to apologize. About yesterday --" 

Bart's shaking his head as he lifts up Tim's tunic, weighing it in his hands. "It's heavier than I thought." 

"Armored." 

"Right, right." Bart tries several times to slip it on over his head, wrap it around his chest, work his arms through the holes. "It's, um." 

"Locked," Tim says. He lowers his voice. "Bart --" 

"It won't happen again. Promise." Bart pushes his hair out of his eyes and picks up the cape, swirling it like he's a matador. "No more molesting Robin, I promise." 

"I --" The word sounds like one of Kon's, thoughtless and crude but accurate nonetheless. "Molesting?" 

Bart twirls in the cape and grins over his shoulder. "Unless you want me to. But, like, personal space and stuff? I can totally respect that." 

Tim means to take the cape back, but it swirls unpredictability, exposing Bart's arm. Sinew slides beneath soft, tight skin, under Tim's hand. "I --. Just need to be careful." 

Bart nods and darts in, pressing his forehead against Tim's for -- it must feel like an hour in subjective-time, but it's almost too brief, lasting only as long as it takes for the cape to slither to the floor and sigh as it settles. 

* 

The next weekend, Tim barely gets a chance to talk to Bart. Kissing is out of the question. On Friday evening, Bart's orbiting around the kitchen, madly attempting to translate Interlac cuisine into 21st-century ingredients. 

Tim isn't hungry. He regrets that, later, after Cassie bursts in with Kon in her arms, and the Persuader hacks his way into their reality, and the team vaults far ahead in time to join the Legion. 

While Tim's stomach is still growling, they bounce back to the near-future. The sick, dirty sky and their own faces on adult psychos make *this* time more disturbing, more alien, than the 30th century ever was. 

Having come face-to-pistol with his worst dread, Tim returns home to death. First there is Mrs. Dibny's funeral, where he sees Bart across the room. At the reception, Bart changes into the suit he wore to the airport; Tim wears the suit he wore to Stephanie's interment, the same one he'll wear again by the end of the week. First, however, he skids in his father's blood and everything goes black as dirt. 

He's not hungry, not any more. 

Bodies rot in Gotham graves while he turns tail for Bludhaven. He sees Dana safely adopted by experts in emotion, then takes to patrolling new, unwelcoming streets. 

Once he derails Bruce's ridiculous adoption scheme, it's as if Tim Drake disappears. If Kon or Bart look for him in Gotham, he doesn't hear about it. Tim Drake has no telephone number or address; the utility bills go to Wayne Enterprises' Accounts Payable and the lease was signed by Robbie Malone. 

He won't, *ever*, become Batman, but he can, he has to, be Robin to the best of his ability. 

He has fewer responsibilities now, fewer conflicting loyalties, but those that remain have engorged, grown in importance, *spread* to cover the new absences. 

His life has never been normal, so he does not waste his time wishing for things to return to...normal. 

Certain routines and personalities persist, however, in fairly predictable ways. Barbara, Dick, Bruce, Alfred, and, yes, Bart remain themselves. 

It isn't long before Bart starts harassing people again. To stop him, as Tim knows he should, would require talking to him. He keeps himself too busy--patrolling earlier, for much longer, each day--to do that. 

Bart leaves traces wherever he goes. He can't seem to help himself. 

"Kid Flash has been inquiring after you. Again." Oracle does not sigh, at least not audibly, but the implication is there. "What *is* your favorite color?" 

"Sorry," Tim says automatically and rubs his eyes, spirit-gum sticking to his knuckles. "Blue." 

"Figured," she says and signs off. 

It isn't more than twelve hours before Dick calls. Once he stopped bugging Tim to *talk about his feelings*, he went right back to treating Tim like an amusing irritant. "Dude, Wally's on my *ass* about Imp--whatever the hell he's calling himself these days." 

"Kid Flash." 

"Yeah, whatever. How the fuck do I know what kind of cake you like?" 

"Vanilla, actually." 

Dick laughs at him for such a long time, and so *loudly*, that Tim holds the receiver away from his ear and counts his heartbeats. "Va--*of course*. Jesus, Timmy. *Try* for a little variety, would you?" 

Tim expects he's still laughing when he hangs up. He tries not to think of how the conversation will go down with Wally. Tries, and fails. 

On Wednesday, when he arrives in the cave for his weekly check-in, Bruce is bent over reams of evidence, court transcripts and videotapes and surveillance photos. "Good, you're here," he says without looking up. "Before we begin --" 

"Blue, vanilla, Canadian bacon, and Quincy, M.E." 

"Pardon?" 

"My favorite color, flavor, pizza topping, and TV show. Respectively." 

"Good to know," Bruce says slowly. "But I meant --" 

"I'm sorry he's on your case, too." Robin crosses his arms. "I'll talk to him." 

Bruce finally turns around to look at him. "Who?" 

"Oh." Robin squints at the nearest stalactite. "I thought Kid Flash --. Never mind." 

"Ahh." Bruce runs his hand, distractedly, through his hair. "I referred him to Alfred." His tone is mild, but there's something almost *amused* around his eyes. "Now, what do you make of this --?" 

Bruce pushes the surveillance photos toward him. Robin is grateful enough for the work that he almost lets a smile slip. 

"The lad appears entirely genuine in his affection for you," Alfred comments when he drops by on Thursday with the weekly groceries-and-supplies delivery. He hands Tim a roast-beef sandwich from the top of the first bag and smiles tightly. "Exuberant, even. I speak, of course, of young Mister Allen." 

"I figured," Tim says. After he's swallowed the first bite, he adds lightly, "Not like there's many guys courting me and harassing my fam--friends." 

Alfred busies himself by stocking the cabinets. When the sandwich is gone, Tim washes his hands and asks, "What'd he want?" 

"Ahh." Alfred unpacks an entire carton of yogurt, lining each one up precisely on the fridge's bottom shelf, before expanding. "I fear that is not my place." 

Tim points at him. "You brought him up." 

Alfred nods serenely. "I did." 

"Alfred --" Tim touches his shoulder, rests his fingertips on the dry, soft linen of Alfred's shirt. "I can go grocery shopping for myself, you know." 

"I have no doubts on that matter." Alfred opens the freezer door and slides in two large casserole trays. 

"And I can cook." 

"Of course," Alfred says and dries his hands. 

Tim wonders, not for the first time, just how much of Bruce's placid authority was learned at Alfred's knee. "You don't have to --" 

"Do not mistake concern," Alfred says, rehanging the towel, "for criticism. Caretaking, I dare say, is a gift, freely given, and offers no comment on--" He purses his lips. "On one's competence." 

Even Bruce will never manage to rival Alfred for gnomic observations. Tim steps back. "Message received." 

"I do hope so." Alfred walks slowly to the front door; Tim would offer his arm, but he knows he'd be refused. "Shall I give Miss Cassandra your greeting?" 

That's another coded message. Robin and Batgirl have sliced up the city between them and rarely see each other. "Thanks," Tim tells Alfred. "I'd appreciate that." 

During his afternoon catnap, Tim dreams of open graves and empty skies, cities drained of their souls and the weight of a gun in his hand. He patrols as soon as dusk gathers along the horizon, impatient for some action. Mindless violence, he thinks, would be just the ticket. 

Instead, the 'haven is annoyingly quiet tonight, just two carjackings and a single bar fight before his text-comm blinks to life with the coordinates for a rendezvous location with Batgirl. 

Neither of them can call Henrik Avenue "No Man's Land" without wincing, but that's just what it is, the main artery between their respective spheres of influence. Robin swings onto the roof of the old Firemen's Home from the southwest. His back turned to the glare of Henrik, it takes him a moment to find Batgirl in the shadows. 

She had been pacing; when he finally sees her, she draws up, suddenly still as a small raven. She points to the corner of the roof. 

Bart. Bart sits leaning against the balustrade, knees drawn up, hugging a backpack to his chest. He looks small and scared, lost and wide-eyed. As Robin comes nearer and drops to one knee, he can make out a bruise fading high on Bart's cheek. 

That bruise is right over the *gag* in Bart's mouth. 

"Why?" Robin asks, not bothering to turn around. He cuts the strip of Kevlar that served as a gag and touches Bart's shoulder. 

"He...knows you." Batgirl crosses her arms. "Your name." 

Robin goes to check the bruise, asking Bart, "What happened?" 

Bart flinches from Robin's hand. "She did." 

In moments of great stress, the autonomic nervous system takes over basic physical functions. Robin's pulse speeds through heavy limbs as he glances at Batgirl and closes his hand on Bart's upper arm. "He's a friend. We don't --" He kicks the gag toward her. "We don't beat up friends." 

Robin recognizes, for the first time, how disturbing the full cowl makes Batgirl look. He gets a flash of what she must look like to criminals, what she seemed to Bart: she is dark, implacable, and regards him with invisible eyes. 

"He was..." She pushes both her palms out in front of her, then up over her head, describing a wide circle. "Loud. With your name." 

"Only because she knows you," Bart says thickly. The bruise has nearly faded all the way, but, Robin suspects, Bart's feelings are still deeply hurt. "I'm not *stupid*." 

"I'll take over," Robin tells Batgirl. 

She nods and drops off the roof. 

Bart is subdued, radically so, on the way back to the loft. He only speaks once, when Robin wraps his arm around Bart's waist, preparing to shoot a drop-line. At the touch, Bart buries his face against Robin's neck and whispers, "Missed you." 

"Yes," Robin replies as the street rushes up to meet them. 

Bart doesn't speak again until they are safely inside. "You live here?" he asks, circling the main room. He does it slowly, even for a human. "Alone, right?" 

"Alone, yes." Tim hangs up the cape and peels off his mask. "Batgirl's not coming back." 

"Phew!" Bart tilts back his head, speed-reading the books' titles, his lips blurring together. 

"Hungry?" Tim pulls off his undershirt and tosses it at the laundry hamper on his way to the kitchen. 

"Always!" Bart catches up, sliding into the kitchen before the door can close. "So, all alone? No school or anything, right?" 

"No." Tim hands him an apple and a loaf of bread. "How'd you know that?" 

"I've got sources!" Bart crunches through the apple, then shoots the core underhand at the bin. "Don't you get *bored*, though? All Robin, all the time? I'd get bored." 

"You get bored playing three Playstations and reading four books while eating dinner." Tim slices the rest of yesterday's meatloaf and starts building two sandwiches. 

"True," Bart admits. "But *still* --" 

"Why are you here?" Tim swipes the mayonnaise across the bread and spatters the counter. 

"Missed you." 

Bart usually speaks with liberal use of exclamation points and even frequent interrobangs. Their absence now echoes in Tim's ears, at the back of his throat. 

"I've been --" Busy? No. Tim turns around to hand Bart his plate. "I've had a lot on my mind." 

Bart nods and pushes his hand through his hair as he devours the sandwich. 

Superhearing would be nice, Tim thinks pointlessly. That way, he could hear the whisper of silky strands over, across, long thin fingers. 

He drops the plates with a clatter into the sink. 

"Wally feels really guilty," Bart says quietly. 

Tim doesn't give a shit about Wally West. 

"Batman yelled at him. Then he kind of took it out on me," Bart adds. "I didn't know. I --" 

"Bart," Tim says through his teeth. When he turns around, Bart's mouth is open, his eyes wide, shoulders drawn in tight. "Do you want to make out?" He clears his throat and wills a smile. "Fool around, I mean?" 

"God, yes! Give me a sec --" Bart grabs his backpack and starts to take off; he skids to a stop against refrigerator. "Where's the bathroom?" 

"First door on the left." 

"Be right back!" 

One by one, Tim throws away the shards of the broken plates, letting the sharp edges slide across his palms. The pain gives him a focus, a horizon beyond which thought can vanish. 

Tim will never *be* in his body, irrevocably and joyously, like Dick, like Cass. That's yet another thing he (now) shares with Bruce. 

He can, however, visit his body, much as the playboy visits social events. 

If that means that Bart's in the position of a dippy debutante, then --. Better this way than Dick's, confusing physical need with the emotional. Better Bart-the-deb than Bart-the-wife. Husband. 

Tim walks on silent feet back into the living room. His hands itch to touch and grasp and *pull*. His mouth is empty and dry. 

"Ta-da!" Bart runs toward him, grabbing Tim's hands and twirling around him. 

He's wearing --. He changed into --. Crimson and flapping yellow and a stripe of grass green. Tim blinks until his sight clears. 

Bart's got his hands on his hips as he tilts his head and smiles. Tim supposes the expression's meant to be coquettish, but --. 

Bart doesn't have a sly bone in his body. 

His body, yes. Bart is lines, angles, bone and soft skin. A shrunken red t-shirt that clings to his chest and only just skirts his waist. His briefs, kelly-green and snug across his groin. And, worst, best, *strangest* of all, there's a canary-yellow rain slicker flapping on Bart's back, its sleeves tied around his shoulders. 

"Bart, uh." 

"Crap!" Bart paws at his hair, snaps down a cheap plastic Lone Ranger mask over his eyes. "No Bart here! I'm *Robin*." He crosses his arms tightly. Gestures, the composition of bodies as evidence: Tim sees himself, sees *Robin*, in Bart's stance. 

"I." Tim shakes his head. The gun-barrel, remembered, sours his tongue. "I'm not going to be Batman." 

Bart-Robin cocks his head. "That's good to hear, citizen." He claps his hand on Tim's shoulder. "Can't have just anyone playing vigilante." As he leans in, he lifts on side of the mask and whispers, "Do you like it?" 

Tim looks him up and down. If anything, Bart's get-up resembles a kid in his pajamas desperately trying to delay bedtime. The details -- the details, how the shirt clings to his pectorals, how his hip curves maybe three degrees into the briefs, the obvious-obscene *lump* his dick makes under the taut green -- the details. Contradict that impression. 

Bart shifts his weight from foot to foot under Tim's scrutiny. 

"It's fairly old-fashioned," Tim says slowly. The cape's shorter, even, than Jason's. It's not a costume, it's the suggestion of principal elements, reduced to color and composition. Bart's skin is gold-pale, Bart is --. 

"But do you *like* it?" Bart shivers when Tim tugs loose the knot on the fake cape and pushes it off. His nipples peak under the stretched fabric, under Tim's thumbs, in his fingers. Bart's biting his lip, shivering, looking up through his lashes, as Tim runs his hands down to the shirt's hem, then grabs Bart's bony hips. 

Physicality can be as unpredictable as anything else. 

"Yes. Yes, I do." Tim's mouth tracks the heat of Bart's throat, licks at the goosebumps, the shivers. He snaps the elastic on the briefs and Bart gulps audibly, butting his chest against Tim's, clawing his hand through Tim's hair. 

Their kiss is brief, messy, Bart's fingers knotting at the back of Tim's hair, Tim's hand squeezing the hard, high curve of one of Bart's small buttocks. Bart sucks Tim's tongue with teeth and whispers squeakily, then yelps when Tim shoves him back onto the couch. 

"Sssh, shh --" Tim runs his hands as soothingly as he can up Bart's legs, through soft invisible hair, ankles to rocky knees to tight, lean thighs, then spreads them wide before planting his knee on the edge of the cushion and restarting the kiss. 

Bart unfolds under him. Wide wet mouth and long, bare throat, his limbs splayed out, akimbo, messy. He gasps, mouth working on air, before he folds back up around Tim, drawing him in with scrabbling hands and clinging legs. He drops rapidfire kisses all over Tim's face, heat that sparks and spreads and joins up, until they're both breathless and shivering. 

"Glad you like it, glad, glad you like, like, me --" The words sputter out between the kisses, staccato and almost meaningless, then get swallowed up when their mouths mash together again. 

Both their hips are jerking when Tim works his hand under Bart's ass. His palm describes the curve there, squeezing, making Bart's head fall back, drawing out moist, breathy sighs. "Oh, oh --" 

Bart reaches forward blindly, fingertips skating roughly across Tim's thigh, seeking --. 

"I'm really hard," Tim says against Bart's ear and bites down. "Bart. Robin." Bart's hand spasms on his thigh and Tim twitches his hips, pushes against Bart's knuckles. "So hard." 

Bart's lashes flutter. "Me. Too." 

He cups Bart's dick, finding the wet spot with his thumb and rubbing at it until Bart makes those squealing sighs again. 

"You are," Tim says and leans a little way back, unzipping his fly, pushing Bart's hand inside. His skin feels too tight, foreign and unknown, cold winds over tumultuous *heat*. "See? Feel that? How hard you make me." 

Bart's shaking everywhere, no rhythm to it. The damp spot widens, gets wetter. "Yeah. Yeah. I want --" 

Tim feels his kiss-numb mouth curve. As if he's smiling. "You want to help, don't you?" 

"Yeah --" Bart giggles, then rocks his hips forward as Tim strokes two fingers up the length of his dick. "Robin's really helpful --" 

The laugh that breaks free from Tim's mouth feels barbed. Rakes raw his throat. "So is Bart. Flash." 

Bart's mask is totally askew, pushed up on his forehead, elastic tangled in his hair. His eyes open, staring vaguely. "Yeah. I --. I *want* --" 

Tim rolls his hips into Bart's restless hand. "Me, too." 

Impatience must be contagious. Tim just *wants*. So much, wants to keep kissing the soprano sighs out of Bart's slick mouth, until he loses air, until he's breathless, comatose. Wants to feel Bart's skin heat up -- like this, here and up there and over, down, *here* -- wants to taste the sweat prickling up, wants to taste and come and yell and make Bart yell and laugh. He *wants* and he wants *everything*, now, at once. 

Bart sucks on Tim's ear as he wiggles and grunts, peeling down the briefs one-handed. He won't let go of Tim's dick, the strokes anxious and erratic. Greedy, like it's a toy he stole, like he might lose it. 

Tim hears himself grunt as he lifts himself away, off Bart. Intending to give Bart room, but -- cold here. Vertiginous, solitary. He grunts again as he falls to the side and Bart's hand is yanked free. 

In a blur of red-shirt and gold-skin, Bart strips off his briefs, then Tim's pants and boxers. The wet fly pulls, adhesive-sticky, off Tim's dick, and Bart's right there, lying with him, pushing Tim onto his back. They bite each other's lips, chins, as Bart squirms back onto Tim's lap. Straddling his thighs, pushing their dicks together. 

Need is electric and urgent, greedy as anything. His nails in Bart's scalp, the kiss a deep, sore thing. 

"What --. What should we do?" Bart pants out the words, twitching his hips like a, a *burlesque* dancer, shorting out Tim's nerves, making Tim's cock leap and burn. 

"Everything," Tim says. Wraps his fingers around Bart's dick, scrapes nails over his balls. "I want --" 

"Everything." Bart stiffens and Tim's hands go cold, then fiery, as he understands that he's causing every single jerk, stutter, *sensation* in Bart's body right now. 

Bart's *his*. Not a deb, hardly a Robin. Bart's spasming, shouting, shoving into Tim's hand and pulling on Tim's hair, his shoulder, as he comes. Quivering, too fast to see, noise escaping in ragged streaks from the storm. 

Bart's falling on him, and Tim sucks on his chest, on the fabric, finds a nipple with his teeth. Loose and heavy, Bart twitches and breathes fast, gustily, shallowly. He mumbles, something, birdsong too fast, then more urgently, before jostling Tim's hand away. 

"Ow." He grins crookedly. "Whoa. Wow." 

"Sorry?" Tim isn't, though, just hard and *wet*, rubbing up against the planes of Bart's belly. 

Bart's eyes are hot, molten as he sucks his lower lip until it goes white. "Can I --?" 

He's already sliding, bumping, tobogganing to the floor before Tim can say, and thrust forward, "Do it --" 

Bart's smile is wide, red, his hair silky, as he cranes forward, a single line of speed. Trajectory of smile-tongue-throat-*spine*, fastened on the head of Tim's cock. Tim's ass lifts off the couch, he's bucking, dick slapping Bart's cheek. There's a giggle, firm grasp, a grunt, and -- mouth. Tim has to close his eyes. Wet, slick *hot*. 

No, he has to *see*. Bart's folded into his groin, pushing that wide mouth joltingly down Tim's shaft. His narrow shoulders roll and lift under Tim's hands, in time with Tim's hips. Bart's *bobbing* over his dick, tongue sliding, slurping, and he's making these wet, pleased, eager sounds, licking and sucking until Tim's entire nervous system glows, incandesces, and *shrinks*. Until he can't breathe, until his skin constricts, he can't see, until he's pushing and shoving and shooting into --. Bart. 

He comes in jarring, bouncing thrusts, like his bones have splintered, fallen aside, leaving him empty, skin and buzzing heat. 

He's at rest, on his back, Bart crawling back up and covering him, kissing his face with sticky, stinky lips. Too gently, so carefully. 

Bart doesn't say anything, not even about the wet smears around Tim's eyes, blurring his vision, cooling on his cheeks. He just licks at Tim like a cat and breathes so deeply. Gently. 

Bart is made of speed, all motion and coltish limbs, bones and sharp angles. It's inconceivable, then, that he fits *here*, still and quiet, covering Tim from neck to feet. Even more impossible that this feels *good*. 

It can't. He can't feel. Good. 

Tim buries his face against Bart's hair. "Nightwing said there'd be cake." 

Bart trembles, laughing. "That was better, though." 

"Was?" Past-tense, history and memory. Not yet. Tim's hand coasts down Bart's back, pinches his ass. He wants more, present-tense and endless as a moment. Bart, of all people, has to understand that; there's subjective-time and childish *hunger* here. 

"More? More!" Bart's mouth moves against Tim's neck and he pulls back, pecks at Tim's lips. "More, good." 

Once, at the circus, Tim got to hug another boy in red-green-yellow and get his forehead kissed and he got all the popcorn, soda, cotton-candy he asked for. 

It's been a long time since then, since he could take that much, since he *wanted* that much. 

When he licks at the corner of Bart's mouth, he tastes salty, buttery come. He holds on as tight as he can. 


End file.
